The invention relates to a water-ride facility.
Rides of this kind, which are very popular in leisure parks, provide water lanes, including ones of a type resembling roller coasters, with a pre-established path for a watercraft, e.g., a boat or similar floating body.
In order to give the passenger as a realistic as possible a sense of boat travel the watercraft should float freely in the areas containing water.
In order to achieve this end, the watercraft are usually guided in channels which are made, at least in part, of concrete or plastic and which are powered by drives that are most often provided under the surface of the water. This drive may be a wire cable guided in different directions over guide rollers, such that the floating body of the watercraft, which is attached to this wire cable, is pulled through the water. Furthermore, the vessel may be driven by local current pumps or by means of the channel gradient.
Also known are white-water lanes, which are designed like roller coasters. Here the watercraft pass through a schuss section and reach an area of water located at a lower elevation. Since the vessel is exposed to high forces and high load changes, safety is of special importance in the schuss section. Consequently the floating body of the watercraft is firmly attached to an undercarriage that is guided by rails, at least in the area of the schuss section.
In order to realize an operation that is as naturalistic as possible, the undercarriage of the watercraft can leave the guide system after the schuss section has been traversed, with the result that the watercraft floats more or less freely inside of the channel.
To be sure, controlling the vessel inside this area, particularly given a varying load on the boat, is problematic, or at least extraordinarily costly. It is also impossible to prevent the watercraft from colliding with the channel walls during operation, and this fact disrupts the passenger's sense that the vessel is floating freely.
Threading the undercarriage into the guide mechanism after leaving behind the area in which the watercraft floats freely is particularly difficult. No less problematic is unthreading the undercarriage after passing through a schuss section, since for reasons of safety this can only occur if the floating body has stabilized after entering the water. For example, forces that arise after the craft enters the water can be used to only a limited degree in influencing the travel effect.
The continuous guidance of an undercarriage firmly attached to the floating body is generally preferred across the entire body of water, and for the reasons indicated above, though the price paid for this is that the floating motion of the vessel body is comparatively unrealistic.
It is true that DE 298 23 591 U1 describes a watercraft in which a floating body is connected in a flexible manner to an undercarriage acting as a guide unit. However, this flexible connection does not make it possible for the floating body to float naturalistically.
The present invention is based on the problem of creating a water-ride in which the watercraft is safely conducted in all areas, including schuss sections where there are large differences in elevation, and the floating body nonetheless executes largely naturalistic movements in the remaining areas of water, even given a varying load and a varying water level, and the unnaturalistic guidance of the vessel through the water channel is eliminated.